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has happened–’
    ‘Basil – ?’
    My heart raced. Perhaps he’d been spotted by a horror-film producer and whisked off to Hollywood. Perhaps he’d eloped with the Fairy Queen. Perhaps he’d missed his cue for the trap door, and broken his blasted neck.
    ‘No, it’s Jeremy. He phoned me this morning with quite the most fabulous job in the world.’
    ‘Jeremy? Jeremy who?’
    I let her into the flat.
    ‘Jeremy Graham. You know, he does the publicity for the Capricorn shipping people.’
    ‘Ah, yes.’
    I remembered a superior bird with tight trousers and a curly bowler we’d met in a pub.
    ‘So I had to absolutely drop everything and fly. But here’s the stupid thing.’ Ophelia laughed. ‘I’ve got to have a medical examination first. Me! Who’s never had a day’s illness in my life, and all my relatives living to be simply hundreds.’
    ‘Medical examination?’
    I wondered what on earth she was advertising, particularly as all the girls in the magazines seemed to be photographed in a state of advanced malnutrition.
    ‘Yes, darling.’ Ophelia made for the consulting-room. ‘I’m going modelling on a ship. Isn’t it thrilling? Three weeks all the way to South America, fly home, glorious sunshine, absolutely everything paid and no housework. What do I do now? Go behind that screen thing?’
    ‘Now – now just a minute.’
    She looked at me in surprise.
    ‘What on earth’s the matter, Gaston?’
    ‘Nothing really, but…well, this could be all most frightfully embarrassing.’
    ‘Embarrassing?’
    ‘I mean…dash it! You ought really to go to some other doctor.’
    ‘But darling! I don’t know any other doctors.’
    ‘Lots of them about,’ I assured her. ‘Reliable and courteous GPs on both sides of Sloane Street. Just stick a pin in a brass plate.’
    ‘Gaston, you are making a fuss–’
    ‘Professional etiquette, and all that–’
    ‘Anyone would think I wanted you to cut my leg off or something. After all, I’ve only come for a certificate.’
    Ophelia disappeared behind the screen.
    She left me wondering what to do. Naturally, in the profession one sees a fair slice of the population with its clothes off, and with no particular feelings except wondering how people ever become nudists unless suffering from advanced myopia. But I loved Ophelia. I’d put her on a ruddy great pedestal, like Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace. I was absolutely dashed if I was going behind that screen coldly to palpate the liver of the woman I adored, and ask all sorts of questions which would never have done in the drawing-room. And dressed in a dinner jacket, too.
    ‘Do you want me to take everything off, darling?’
    Bits of Ophelia’s wardrobe not on public view began to flutter along the top of the screen.
    ‘No, no, not everything! Only the essentials.’
    ‘The essentials – ?’
    ‘I mean, keep the essentials on. Really Ophelia!’ I started to pace the peach-coloured carpet. ‘This jolly well isn’t fair.’
    She seemed to find it rather funny.
    ‘I do believe you’re being coy, Gaston. And I thought you doctors were coldly indifferent to the human body?’
    ‘Yes, but not to one you’ve taken out to dinner,’ I told her smartly.
    She laughed. ‘I think I’m ready for you now, darling.’
    I hesitated. Then I suddenly had one of those inspirations of mine, which often strike very profitably just as they’re coming under starter’s orders.
    ‘I can’t possibly examine you,’ I exclaimed. ‘Not this evening, at any rate.’
    Ophelia’s blonde head appeared.
    ‘Don’t tell me you have early closing, or something?’
    ‘No. But I haven’t got a chaperone.’
    ‘A chaperone? Good God, man! What do I want a chaperone for? Or are you intending to send me home in a hansom?’
    ‘Not for you, old girl,’ I explained. ‘But for me. Rule one in medical school – examine no female between the clavicles and the kneecap unless in the presence of another of her sex. And of